After taking on an array of microchip giants in a nearly decade-long legal battle marked by accusations about explosive e-mails, document-shredding parties and patent abuse, struggling Rambus hopes it is finally near a massive payday.

In a case set for trial Jan. 11 in San Francisco County Superior Court, the Los Altos company has accused South Korean-based Samsung Electronics and Hynix Semiconductor, as well as Micron Technology of Idaho, of conspiring to sabotage its chip technology. And if Rambus wins, it could reap up to $12.9 billion in damages.

That would be a huge vindication for a company that characterizes itself as David battling Goliath. Indeed, its revenue last year was just $142 million. By comparison, its three adversaries each racked up sales in the billions.

“This company has a little more than 300 employees, many of whom have worked very hard over the years to innovate and solve problems for the industry,” said Rambus general counsel Thomas Lavelle. But instead of being rewarded, he added, a cadre of chip manufacturers “wanted to kill us.”

Capstone Investments analyst Jeff Schreiner believes a Rambus victory might bankrupt some of the chipmakers it is suing and reshape the industry.

It also likely would draw jeers from Rambus critics, who regard the company as overly litigious and consider its monetary demands excessive. “This is a company that has a hard time getting a fistful of cookies out of the cookie jar, because it won’t let go of half in order to withdraw its hand,” said chip analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates.

Incorporated in 1990, Rambus developed a new technology for dynamic random access memory, or DRAM, chips, which provide high-speed storage and retrieval of data from personal computers and other gadgets. Rambus claims its design enabled the chips to keep up with the increasing speed of advanced microprocessors, which serve as the brains of personal computers. And it persuaded a number of chip makers to license its technology in the 1990s.

But then, the company alleges, Hynix, Samsung and Micron — which were pushing an alternative DRAM design they believed would yield them more profit — tried to make Rambus’ version unattractive to computer makers by conspiring to limit the supply and boost the price of chips based on Rambus’ architecture.

As proof, Rambus’ 2004 lawsuit cites e-mails from the companies, including one from a Micron executive, who, after allegedly making conspiratorial comments to another firm, concluded, “please visit me if I end up in jail.”

The U.S. Justice Department several years ago also accused some DRAM chipmakers of price-fixing. That resulted in Hynix, Samsung, Elpida Memory of Japan and German manufacturer Infineon paying fines totaling several hundred million dollars, although it’s unclear how much evidence from that investigation might be introduced in the San Francisco trial.

Samsung and Micron officials declined to be interviewed, and Hynix executives couldn’t be reached for comment. But in their legal filings, they denied Rambus’ claims and accused it of obliterating thousands of documents favorable to them on company “shred days,” during which Rambus’ employees partied “to celebrate completion of the document destruction.”

Rambus, which denies the charge, also has been the target of allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and European Commission. They accused it of trying to monopolize the DRAM market and charge unreasonable royalties by patenting its technology and then hiding those patents from a group that adopted Rambus’ technology as an industry standard.

But after a U.S. appellate court ruled Rambus hadn’t acted improperly, the two regulatory bodies last year dropped their investigations, with Rambus promising European authorities to scale back its royalty demands. Rambus also recently won a victory in a 9-year-old patent dispute, in which Hynix agreed to pay it $397 million, pending its appeal. Now, with its conspiracy suit against Hynix, Samsung and Micron nearing trial, Rambus hopes it’s on the verge of its biggest triumph.

Without offering an opinion on Rambus’ claims, Jim Handy, of the chip-market research firm Objective Analysis, said it’s important for innovations to be fairly rewarded. Otherwise, he said, “that could pull the plug out of Silicon Valley.”

Yet others say a Rambus victory would send a troubling message throughout the tech industry.

“I don’t think it bodes well,” said David Balto, a former FTC policy director. “There is something profoundly wrong with our legal system that we reward people so much for litigation” instead of producing products.

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